


Broken Window

by Disloyal_Order_Of_Water_Buffaloes



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [4]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Denying food as punishment, Other, Secret Caretaking, bad things happen, dave is mentioned, infected wound, they're brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disloyal_Order_Of_Water_Buffaloes/pseuds/Disloyal_Order_Of_Water_Buffaloes
Summary: A young Racetrack Higgins breaks a window and relies on his older brother to help him clean up.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666384
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Broken Window

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Infected wounds, abuse/neglect, denying food as punishment, i think that's it?
> 
> This is the next part of my Bad Things Happen Bingo. Someone requested Secret Caretaking and infected wound.
> 
> I definitely impulse wrote this at 1 am so I'm so sorry if it's not as put together as previous ones.

The last thing Jack was expecting at 9 PM was a small knock on his bedroom door.

Too soft to be one of his parents.

“Come in, Tony,” he said quietly. Not a moment later the door opened and closed as quietly as possible and Race was limping toward his bed. “Woah, what happened?”

The seven-year-old sniffled and was visibly relieved when he was lifted off his feet and sat onto the bed. 

“What happened, kiddo?” he asked and quickly looked him over. 

“I st-stepped on the glass,” Race whispered, clearly trying to hold back tears. 

Jack furrowed his eyebrows and reached for a tiny first aid case he kept in his backpack. He really needed to thank Davey for buying him that sometime. “Where’d you find glass?”

“Downstairs,” he admitted barely above a whisper. 

“There’s glass in the basement?”

“...Maybe.”

With one look at him, Racer broke. “I was playing down there because I wanted to be alone and I broke that little window that leads outside ‘cause I found a baseball and was playing catch with myself.”

Jack stared at him for a moment before laying him down so he could look at Race’s foot. There were bits of glass stuck in the bottom of his brother’s foot. “Was this just now?”

“...No.”

“How long ago was this?” he asked carefully and sighed. Jack was going to need tweezers to get the glass out.

“I dunno. It was before mom and dad got home.”

“Alright, stay here,” he said quickly, quietly dashing to the bathroom. That was  _ hours _ ago, and he could only assume their parents didn’t know. “Okay, kid. This might hurt but I need to get this stuff outta your foot. You’ve been walking on it this whole time?”

“Yeah-- _ ow _ ,” he hissed when Jack began to pull the largest of the small pieces out. 

“I know, it hurts,” he hummed and began to work on pulling out a smaller piece. “I gotta take them out, though, so you can heal. You should’ve come to me right away.”

“I was scared of getting in trouble.”

“You know I wouldn’t have told on you, Tony.”

“I didn’t want  _ you _ to get in trouble  _ for _ me. I was going to go to mom and dad but they’re in bed, I think.”

It was early for them to be in bed, but anything was possible, Jack thought to himself as he pulled the last piece of glass out.

Jack realized all he had in his little kit was gauze and bandages.

Which meant he had nothing to clean the cut with. 

Well, there was probably hydrogen peroxide or something in the bathroom, but Jack was pretty sure he got told in school not to use that on cuts--that doctors said it wasn’t useful anymore.

Then again, his textbooks from all of his health classes were severely out of date. And he was a thirteen-year-old who had never dealt with this before.

He certainly didn’t want to make his brother’s foot worse, so he wrapped the bottom of Race’s little foot in bandages. 

“You wanna sleep in here with me tonight?” he offered and scooped up the glass so he could throw it away.

“You won’t get in trouble because of me?”

Jack held up a finger, telling him to hold that thought as he went and washed his hands. Once he came back, he shook his head. “They don’t care as long as I handle waking you up and getting you to school.”

“Tomorrow...is Saturday,” Race scrunched up his face.

“Oh. Yeah. It is,” Jack shrugged and pulled Race into a hug. “I’m just a dummy sometimes. But no, neither of us will get in trouble, okay?”

The younger nodded, hoping Jack never pulled away so he didn’t have to see Race still crying.

But after a moment he did exactly that.

“Woah, does it still hurt that bad?”

“No,” Race said quietly and snuggled into Jack’s side. “I just don’t wanna get in bad trouble because of the window.”

“You won’t. Don’t worry.”

“I don’t want  _ you _ to get in trouble.”

“Just go to sleep, Racer. I’ll get up and clean up the glass in the morning,” he promised softly.

Neither of them woke up before their mother found out, though. 

And, as a consequence, Jack spent most of his Saturday thoroughly cleaning the entire basement. 

That just about killed him. He could handle not eating for most of the day and being trapped down there with all of the cleaning chemicals, but what killed him was the idea of Race forcing himself to walk normally on his foot. Their parents didn’t need to know he was hurt on top of the whole broken window thing. 

Race was a tough kid. He would make it through, but that didn’t mean Jack didn’t wish he could take it all instead of his kid brother being forced to go through this.

When he was finally allowed up and sent to his room, Race was laying on Jack’s bed with tears steadily streaming down his face. 

“I sneaked some food in my pockets for you,” he offered sadly when the door opened. Race began to fumble for the pockets of his pants and set a small baggie of potato chips on the nightstand. They were slightly crushed, but that didn’t mean they weren’t edible. “I know you haven’t eaten.”

“I’m okay,” Jack insisted (though, it was 3:30 PM and he was starving) and sat near his brother’s feet. “I’m gonna look at your foot, okay?”

“Don’t touch it, though. It hurts,” he murmured. Jack just nodded and started to remove the bandages. “Ow! What’d I say?” he demanded when Jack touched just beside the cut.

“Sorry,” he mumbled and observed it. It was swollen, red, and had something yellow-ish coming from it. 

Jack wasn’t sure how to fix that, but he knew it sure as hell wasn’t good.

“Um, just hold on,” he said and went for his first aid kit again. 

“They were mad I slept in your bed.”

“What?” he barely glanced up from the supplies. 

“They were mad. Said I can’t sleep in your bed again tonight. But they didn’t know I’m hurt.”

“Good. I think this might be infected, though,” he hummed and used some gauze to wipe the fluid away from the cut. It didn’t look like  _ puss _ as far as Jack could tell, but he also had very limited knowledge. He just knew that if infections get bad enough, you go to the doctor. 

Race  _ really  _ tried to hold back a yelp when pain shot through his foot. He only had so much power over himself.

“Shh, I know. Just be quiet, okay?” Jack asked and quickly wiped it again. Race cried out just as loud.

“Anthony?” they heard a voice from the hallway.

“ _ Fuck, fuck, fuck _ ,” Jack hissed and dove to hide his little first aid kit.

“Anthony, what’re you…” their father trailed off as he opened the door. 

If Jack had been fucked before, he wasn’t sure what the next step up was.


End file.
